{"id":434123,"date":"2026-01-26T10:34:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T10:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/434123\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T10:34:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T10:34:20","slug":"islam-makhachev-and-kamaru-usman-face-off-backstage-at-ufc-324","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/434123\/","title":{"rendered":"Islam Makhachev and Kamaru Usman face off backstage at UFC 324"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Islam Makhachev and Kamaru Usman are doing their best to make a fight happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">At UFC 322, Islam Makhachev dominated Jack Della Maddalena to claim the welterweight title, becoming just the 11th two-division champion in UFC history. Despite several other top contenders lined up at 170 pounds, Makhachev quickly started to call for his first title defense to come against former champion Kamaru Usman, a bout Usman has also lobbied for. And on Saturday, the two continued to try to push for this matchup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Both Makhachev and Usman were in attendance at UFC 324 on Saturday, and during the event, the two fighters met up backstage to have a good-natured faceoff, with Khabib Nurmagomedov along for good measure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Makhachev is currently the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in MMA and is building a resum\u00e9 as one of the greatest fighters of this generation. Usman is a future Hall of Famer and one of the most accomplished welterweights of all time, with five title defenses to his name. Usman is coming off a unanimous decision win over Joaquin Buckley at UFC Atlanta in June, his first victory in nearly four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islam Makhachev and Kamaru Usman are doing their best to make a fight happen. At UFC 322, Islam&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-434123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}